No such grief was ever known on this continent. All wept, strong, hardened warriors with the rest. People were heartily ashamed when their supply of tears ran out. Some trembled as they passed through the door, and, once outside the room, gave vent to their sorrow in groans and shrieks, while others, in the excess of their grief, cursed God, as though Lincoln’s death was an unjust punishment of him instead of a glorious crown of martyrdom.
Looking back through fifty-four years—after the calm judgment of sages has reasserted their wisdom and after all Lincoln’s enemies have turned to devoted friends—we cannot forbear the renewed assertion that Abraham Lincoln was in some special way unlike other men. That unusual power of inspiration was exhibited in his words and acts almost every day of his closing years.
Through the half century there comes down to us a wonderful sentence in Lincoln’s second inaugural address which is incarnate with vigorous life. Out of the smoke, devastation, hate, and death of a gigantic fratricidal war, above the contentions of parties, jealous commanders, and grief-benumbed mourners, clear and certain as a trumpet call this unlooked-for declaration rang out. It was the voice of God:
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the Nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
What a Christian spirit, what a deference to God, what a determined purpose for good! What a basis for peace among the nations was there stated in one single sentence! Where in the writings of the gifted geniuses, ancient or modern, is another one so potent. Yet the mere dead words are not specially symmetrical, and the expression is in the language of the common people. The influence is that of the spirit; it can never die.
His enemies mourned when he died and all the world said a great soul had departed. But the children of his dear heart and brain will live on the earth forever. They will pray and teach and sacrifice and fight on until all nations shall be the one human family which the prophet Lincoln so clearly foresaw. Men are called to special work. Men are more divine than material; and among the most trustworthy proofs of this intuitive truth is the continuing force of the personality of Abraham Lincoln.
THE END
Footnotes:
[1] Charles Sumner said, in one of his great speeches in Fanueil Hall, Boston, that if the speech Lincoln carefully wrote had not been circulated, or if he had actually delivered the speech which he wrote, the change of direction in the car of progress would have led to delays and disasters “out beyond the limits of human calculation.” Many of the great historians like Hay, Brockett, McClure, and Miss Tarbell have overlooked or thrown aside the most wonderful portion of that speech where the disgusted orator lost his place because of a misplaced leaf of the manuscript from which he was reading.